


Moste Potente Mischief

by mad_martha



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: AU, F/M, Humour
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-08-28
Updated: 2011-08-28
Packaged: 2017-10-23 04:42:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,670
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/246374
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mad_martha/pseuds/mad_martha
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>All that intelligence just has to be genetic.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Moste Potente Mischief

**Author's Note:**

  * For [MadamBeetroot](https://archiveofourown.org/users/MadamBeetroot/gifts).



A faint scuffing sound was the first hint he got that someone might finally be coming to his rescue. Then again, the same sound was all the warning he'd been given before he was thrown headlong into this nightmare. At the sound of a definite footstep on the cold stone floor, he tensed. He heard a sigh.

A very weary, unsurprised sort of sigh.

Someone unbound his hands from the old iron ring above his head. The shock of the bonds suddenly being released made him stagger; hands caught him, neither gently nor roughly, and held him steady until his regained his balance.

Then the blindfold and gag were removed.

Lucius Malfoy squinted painfully into the unexpected light for a moment or two, but eventually managed to focus on the familiar lank black hair, hooked nose and cool, rather mocking eyes of his former colleague, Severus Snape.

"Ah ...." he managed, rather feebly.

"Quite," was Snape's dry response.

There was a pause. Snape seemed to be in no hurry to end it.

"You have my, ah, _deepest_ gratitude, Severus. I really began to think that I might be here for, ah, several hours."

"You mean, you had reached the point where you thought no one would rescue you and that you were going to die here," Snape replied. "In fact, you were actually panicking and on the verge of screaming for help."

Malfoy found the strength to look mildly affronted. "Nonsense! I was just beginning to think I might have to - "

" _Finite incantatum!_ " Snape interrupted, and he swept his wand in a downward motion in front of him. To the blond man's relief the overwhelming sense of panic and impended doom suddenly vanished. "It's really quite a simple paranoia spell, Lucius. I'm surprised you didn't already know it. Now - can you walk by yourself or do you require assistance? Because if you are quite well I need to return to my own home. I have some urgent business to attend to."

"I realise this must present quite an extraordinary appearance, Severus," Lucius all but babbled as he trailed in Snape's wake up the steps of his own dungeon and out into the marble entrance hall of Malfoy Manor. "I can assure you that it was the most freakish accident that let them get past the household wards ... and I suppose I need not add that there were several of them, all quite desperate former associates of the Dark Lord, out for revenge ...."

Snape paused at the great front doors, his hand on the iron handle, and surveyed his one-time associate with a marked curl of the lip.

"You may choose to fool yourself with that ridiculous story, Lucius - whatever salves your pride, I'm sure! - but save it for the credulous public. _I_ know the truth of the matter."

Malfoy bristled. "I'm sure I don't know what you mean!" Then his eyes narrowed suspiciously as realisation dawned. "How _did_ you know to rescue me, anyway?"

"How do you _think?_ " sneered Snape. "Now, if you will kindly excuse me - good night!"

xXx

By the time he returned to Snape Manor, the hour was considerably advanced and Severus Snape discarded his cloak over the back of an angular couch in his study with an expression that could best be described as somewhere between 'miffed' and 'exasperated'.

Another dinner missed. And while he might still be in his wizarding prime, he had nevertheless reached an age where missing a meal could not be shrugged off as easily as it had when he was a callow youth. Although in fairness, his wife almost certainly had something substantial waiting for him in their private parlour, whenever he chose to join her.

Snape snorted, momentarily diverted. His wife having "something substantial waiting for him" was what had got him into this situation - this never-ending _string_ of situations - in the first place. Not for the first time, he irascibly asked himself what on earth he had been thinking of, marrying that infuriating Gryffindor know-it-all.

Hmph. That too probably had something to do with her "substantial something".

And he was putting off the moment of reckoning.

Heaving a sigh, Snape crossed to the fireplace and pulled a bellrope that hung beside the mantelpiece. One of the House-elves (appropriately free and salaried in line with his wife's convictions, and therefore wearing a neat elf-sized suit of livery) appeared in front of him with a _pop_.

"Master rang?"

"I did. I assume Master Horatio and Miss Isobella have retired?"

"Oh yes, Master. They is in bed two hours ago."

"I see. Please inform my wife that I have returned and will join her shortly."

"Yes, Master." The House-elf bobbed his head and disappeared again with another _pop_.

Snape sighed again. Master Horatio and Miss Isobella might have retired two hours ago, but not for one moment did he believe that they were asleep. Squaring his shoulders, he pinned on a forbidding expression and left the study to climb the three flights of stairs to their room. Long before he reached that floor he was aware that he was being watched from between the banister rails above him, but it would be far beneath his dignity to look up and acknowledge this. He proceeded in grim silence, in the faint hope that this might have some effect.

After all, it had worked at Hogwarts, dammit. It had even worked on the vast majority of Death Eaters.

Unfortunately, it had so far failed to work on his own family, as was apparent when he opened the bedroom door and stalked inside. Two bright-eyed figures with curly black hair, clad in white nightshirts, were sitting up in bed, not even bothering to pretend to be asleep. Both of them looked thoroughly delighted to see him.

"Papa! You're home already!" Isobella exclaimed, beaming.

Horatio was more to the point. "Did you find him?" he demanded eagerly.

"Was he _petrified?_ " his sister added hopefully.

"Foaming at the mouth?"

"Gibbering?"

Twins. It had to be something to do with them being twins. Twice the brains; twice the mischief. He hadn't listened when Dumbledore had pointed out, with that irritating twinkly-eyed look of his, that the double dose of fearsome parental intelligence was asking for trouble, but the old fool had been proven right yet again. In spades.

"Exactly what," Snape asked in a controlled voice, "did the pair of you think you were doing this evening?"

Two near-identical faces looked at him incredulously for a moment; then two faces dropped ludicrously.

"Oh, but _Papa!_ " Isobella said, disappointed.

"We thought you'd like it." Horatio looked injured.

"You broke into Malfoy Manor, bound, blindfolded and gagged the master of the house, locked him in his own dungeon, and cursed him with paranoia," he managed to say in a level tone. "What exactly gave you the impression that I would _like_ it?"

"Well, he was a - " Isobella paused and hissed at her brother, _"What was it?"_

"A stinking Death Eater," Horatio supplied.

Snape noted, with a touch of satisfaction utterly unrelated to the current conversation, that his son spoke these unfortunate words with beautiful precision. He and Hermione always insisted upon proper enunciation.

"And who, might I ask, told you that?" he demanded.

"Uncle Ron," Isobella told him promptly. "He and Uncle Harry told us all about it, ages and ages ago. It took us a whole week to plan his downfall!" she added with relish.

Snape reflected that Uncle Ron and Uncle Harry were long overdue for a good frightening. Then he actually registered his daughter's words and felt a touch of fear himself.

A week to plan the breach of a set of ancient and complex household wards, the overpowering of a Dark Arts Master, and the casting of a paranoia spell which, in spite of his comment to Malfoy earlier, was actually no walk in the park.

Dear lord.

"You do realise that Lucius Malfoy is an extremely dangerous man?" he asked them.

The pair of them regarded him rather sceptically and he abandoned this line at once, acknowledging privately that it _was_ rather a feeble argument in the face of what they had just done. He tried a different tack.

"I shall undoubtedly receive an owl from the Ministry of Magic tomorrow, demanding that I attend yet another tribunal with regard to your use of underage magic."

The twins brightened.

"Do you think they will let us go to Hogwarts early _this_ time, Papa?" Horatio asked hopefully.

Snape looked at the pair of them in exasperation ... and conceded defeat.

"Highly unlikely," he said dryly, "not least because no school on this Earth would want to take such an appalling pair of brats a moment sooner than it had to."

Correctly interpreting this as praise and affection of the highest order, the twins beamed at him.

xXx

When he had finally got the pair of them to lie down again, firmly squashed any requests for a bedtime story, and put the lights out, Snape wearily closed the door on his offspring and began the trudge back down the stairs to where his wife waited with a late dinner that was rapidly turning into an early breakfast.

What a night. On the other hand, he had to admit - in a small, well-concealed corner of his mind - that it _had_ almost been worth it to see Lucius Malfoy cringing in his own dungeon.

And he felt a tickle of pride that his son and daughter had once again perpetrated a prank which, even if it did land him in front of a tribunal at the Department of Magical Law Enforcement, would be guaranteed to impress even the most hardened cynic with its precocity.

It _was_ rather a shame that the pair of them couldn't start school early, though; aside from the immense relief from the burden of trying to keep up with them, they were more than ready to start their formal magical education. But there was nothing to be done about that.

After all, even Hogwarts couldn't admit seven-year-olds.


End file.
